Garden Palace
33°51′53″S 151°12′47″E / 33.86460°S 151.21293°E / -33.86460; 151.21293
The Garden Palace was a large, purpose-built exhibition building constructed to house the Sydney International Exhibition in 1879 in Sydney, Australia. In 1882 it was completely destroyed by fire. It was designed by James Barnet and constructed by John Young, at a cost of £191,800 in only eight months.[1] This was largely due to the importation from England of electric lighting, which enabled work to be carried out around the clock.
Description and history
A reworking of London's Crystal Palace, the plan for the Garden Palace was similar to that of a large cathedral, having a long hall with lower aisle on either side, like a nave, and a transept of similar form, each terminating in towers and meeting beneath a central dome. The successful contractor was John Young, a highly experienced building contractor who had worked on the Crystal Palace for The Great Exhibition of 1851 and locally on the General Post Office and Exhibition Building at Prince Alfred Park.[2]
The dome was 100 feet (30 metres) in diameter and 210 feet (64 metres) in height. The building was over 244 metres long and had a floor space of over 112,000 metres with 4.5 million feet of timber, 2.5 million bricks and 243 tons of galvanised corrugated iron.[3] The building was similar in many respects to the later Royal Exhibition Building in Melbourne. Sydney's first hydraulic lift, was contained in the north tower, enabling visitors to climb the tower.[2] The Garden Palace was sited at what is today the southwestern end of the Royal Botanic Garden (although at the time it was built it occupied land that was outside the Garden and in The Domain). It was constructed primarily from timber, which ensured its complete destruction when engulfed by fire in the early morning of 22 September 1882. The Garden Palace at that time was used by a number of Government Departments and many significant records were destroyed in the fire,[1] notably records of squatting occupation in New South Wales. Between 500 and 1000 pieces of Sydney Aboriginal artefacts were also lost in this fire.
The only extant remains of the Garden Palace are its carved Sydney sandstone gateposts and wrought iron gates, located on the Macquarie Street entrance to the Royal Botanical Garden.[4] A 1940s-era sunken garden and fountain featuring a statue of Cupid marks the former location of the Palace's dome. Few artefacts from the International Exhibition survived the fire. An 1878 Bechstein concert grand piano, that won a first prize, had luckily been removed from the Garden Palace prior to the fire, and is held by the Powerhouse Museum.[5] A number of items are held by the State Library of NSW relating to The Garden Palace include a piece of glass melted by the fire,[6] a handkerchief[7] and a book, The Sydney Garden Palace : a patriotic and historical poem by Frederick Cumming.[8]
- View from afar
- One of the towers
- The Garden Palace
- Statue of Queen Victoria, taken from under the dome
- North Nave (taken from the Orchestra)
- North nave
- Construction of the dome
- Ruins of the Garden Palace, 1882
See also
- List of destroyed heritage
- The Crystal Palace
- New York Crystal Palace
- Royal Exhibition Building - Melbourne's exhibition building.
References
- ^ a b Shirley Fitzgerald (2008). "Garden Palace". Dictionary of Sydney. Dictionary of Sydney Trust. Retrieved 25 May 2016.
- ^ a b Morley, Sarah (Spring 2016). "SL Magazine" (PDF).
- ^ "The 1879 Sydney International Exhibition". Power House Museum. Retrieved 16 August 2016.
- ^ Macey, Richard (15 September 2007). "The palace that became a bonfire". The Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved 25 May 2016.
- ^ Code, Bill (14 September 2016). "Sydney's Garden Palace, the fire and the Bechstein concert grand piano". ABC News. Sydney. Retrieved 18 September 2016.
- ^ "Piece of molten glass from the Garden Palace fire 1882". State Library of NSW. Retrieved 7 July 2022.
- ^ "Large handkerchief with decorated flower border and view of the Industrial Exhibition Building, the Garden Palace". State Library of NSW. Retrieved 7 July 2022.
- ^ Cumming, Frederick (1887). The Sydney Garden Palace : a patriotic and historical poem. Sydney: Stewart & Co.
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recognized
expositions
- London 1851
- Paris 1855
- London 1862
- Paris 1867
- Vienna 1873
- Philadelphia 1876
- Paris 1878
- Melbourne 1880
- Barcelona 1888
- Paris 1889
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- Brussels 1897
- Paris 1900
- St. Louis 1904
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- Ghent 1913
- San Francisco 1915
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- Seville 1929
- Chicago 1933
Universal
expositions
specialized
expositions
- Stockholm 1936
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- Liège 1939
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- Lille 1951
- Jerusalem 1953
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- Helsingborg 1955
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- Brisbane 1988
- Plovdiv 1991
- Genoa 1992
- Taejŏn 1993
- Lisbon 1998
- Zaragoza 2008
- Yeosu 2012
- Astana 2017
Buenos Aires 2023‡- Belgrade 2027
horticultural
exhibitions (AIPH)
- Rotterdam 1960
- Paris 1969
- Amsterdam 1972
- Hamburg 1973
- Vienna 1974
- Montreal 1980
- Amsterdam 1982
- Munich 1983
- Liverpool 1984
- Osaka 1990
- Zoetermeer 1992
- Stuttgart 1993
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- Beijing 2019
- Almere 2022
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recognized
- † Postponed to 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic
- ‡ Cancelled
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